On Friday night, the Utah Mammoth hosted the winless San Jose Sharks for their first game of the season at the newly renovated Delta Center.
Going into this match, the Mammoth were struggling to produce offense and ranked 30th in goals per game, while the Sharks came in struggling to keep the puck out of the net, allowing for more goals per game in the league.
Summary of the game
The Mammoth came out and claimed dominance early. They had a lot of pressure on the offensive end, which led to several early scoring opportunities and a five-on-three power play, where the Mammoth opened the scoring with a great tic-tac-toe game between Clayton Keller, Logan Cooley and Nick Schmaltz, who finished the goal for his first of the season.
Four minutes later, Schmaltz put another puck in the back of the Sharks’ net after Barrett Hayton recovered a puck on the cross and found Keller, who again found Schmaltz in the slot for the goal.
The Mammoth continued this two-goal lead into the first intermission. However, the Sharks would get back on a power play goal just over five minutes into the second frame, where Tyler Toffoli knocked in a one-timer after Karel Vejmelka left behind a rebound on a point shot that he initially saved.
The Sharks used this spark to keep coming and tied the game less than two minutes later on a Jeff Skinner goal. It was a weird one, with Skinner trying to force a pass into the front of the net. It bounced off a Mammoth defender and ended up in the back of the Mammoth net.
This meant the match was tied at halftime. The Mammoth regained the lead with just under four minutes to play in the second frame after Liam O’Brien put a puck into the Sharks’ wide-open net after Yaroslav Askarov mishandled it behind the net, giving the Mammoth a 3–2 lead that they carried into the final period.
In the third, Mammoth started pouring it on. It started when Schmaltz completed the hat trick as he stood all alone in the slot for the third time of the evening. Michael Carcone added his first of the season less than three minutes later, before Keller did the same to give Utah a four-goal lead with less than 10 minutes to play.
Macklin Celebrini finally got his first of the season, bringing the Sharks back within three goals late in the period, but that would be as close as the Sharks would get as the Mammoth would close out the 6-3 victory.
The Sharks return to action on home ice tomorrow night against the Pittsburgh Penguins, while the Mammoth get the night off before playing the Boston Bruins at home on Monday.
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